WEATHER STATION ON NEW PLATFORMS AND WITH NEW DATA
The weather station at Agrupamento de Escolas de Aver-o-Mar, which is currently being run by the Robotics Club, a project resulting from an application from the Ciência Viva programme, has, as of today, been transmitting new data and also has new transmission platforms.
The work carried out, which has António Cunha as its driving force, proved to be unsuitable for the initial platform, as we already had data that the Weather Underground platform didn’t support, hence the need to look for other alternatives, and information is already being transmitted to PWS Weather.
Under the teacher’s guidance, 147 lines of embedded code were recorded for the ATMega 2560 elecronic circuit, 168 lines of python for the interface between the microcontroller and the Weather Underground and PWS Weather platforms, with the new data being transmitted in real time: rainfall, wind, pressure, total daily, monthly and annual rainfall. All the sensors communicate via OneWire and i2c protocols, some analogue and others simple digital.
The station, installed in the Clubs area, is connected to 2 real-time rain gauges, 1 wind speed sensor, 1 outdoor humidity and temperature sensor (AM2301) and a Bosch BMP280 pressure sensor. Since both the 2 rain gauges and the BMP280 sensor use i2c, they are each being addressed individually only at their transmission address, on the same bus, so it was necessary to calculate the addresses in 7-bit precision, an extra job that allows us to use a total of 128 sensors. In more technical terms, for example, the atmospheric pressure sensor is at address 0x77, while the rain gauges are respectively at 0x7d and 0x7b, code developed by the students.
It’s been very interesting to see the growing number of students getting involved in the activities and joining the Club, not least because the challenges don’t stop: creating working documentation in a multilingual version, so as to contribute to inclusion practices in the school, and the development of a logo for the station, or even a mascot, are also on the horizon, as well as challenges that will make us surf much bigger waves!
The application can be accessed on a computer, tablet or mobile phone, which is why we recommend installing it. Please note that you need to select the type of degree in which you want to view it when you enter the menu (choose “celcius” for WU or “metric” for PWS) and select the location [Aver-o-Mar]: PWSWeather – Bring Your Weather to Life.
You can also access the station’s data from the menu on the school’s website, in the top right-hand corner. It’s a source of great pride for the community to see the name of the school, the town and the city being taken around the world, as these projects and platforms are of international calibre!
Congratulations to everyone involved!
We share some records of the PWS platform’s programming and panel activities
